


the mighty fall

by trivia_love



Series: febuwhump 2021 [2]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Everybody Lives, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Gratuitous Pokemon References, Hurt Peter Parker, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Poisoning, set in the best reality in which infinity war and endgame never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29323710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trivia_love/pseuds/trivia_love
Summary: Peter catches the way in which Tony closes his eyes and lays his head back against his seat, letting out a long-suffering sigh, “one of those aliens stung you?”“...Yes?” Peter confirms tentatively.“And you didn’t think to tell us?”“I thought of it,” Peter defends, holding his arm up to show the group, as if to somehow prove he's completely fine. The inverse is the case. He sees Tony cringe slightly as he stares at Peter’s bloody arm, “but I’ve been bitten by a radioactive spider before, so I think I can handle a little sting from a plant gremlin.”
Relationships: Peter Parker & Avengers Team, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: febuwhump 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141946
Comments: 2
Kudos: 140





	the mighty fall

**Author's Note:**

> me: this year i will do febuwhump  
> also me: hmm. actually i will post twice. both times will be like 3 days late
> 
> (for day 7 - poisoning)

The Bronx was overrun before they could even blink.

There’s hundreds of them, tiny little aliens that are apparently super strong and super deadly but remind Peter a bit too much of a Bellsprout army — although comparing aliens to Pokémon is probably a discussion best left for when said aliens aren’t waddling around his city.

(Why couldn’t they have been invaded by a couple hundred Lucarios? _That_ would have been an absolute dream.)

Peter thinks that it’s slightly reminiscent of the Chitauri invasion in 2012 — if the Chitauri had caused 500% less damage — which he’d watched from the television when Ben had shooed him away from the apartment windows and pulled the curtains closed. Then, he had been fascinated by the prospect of aliens in New York, not fully understanding the danger it could have brought about.

Peter had been eleven years old then, and even now he still feels that sense of giddy excitement at the fact that aliens exist. He _understands_ the dangers now, sure, but he also trusts his team to squash this threat relatively quickly, and with minimal damage.

They’re the _Avengers_ , man. It’s just what they do.

“Couldn’t the cops handle this?” Sam’s voice crackles over the comms, catching Peter’s eye as he takes out three of the aliens simultaneously. “I seriously don’t think this is Avengers level.”

“They wheel us out to deal with the aliens,” Natasha’s voice responds. Peter can’t see her, but she sounds definitely more bored than exasperated, “you know that. The police freeze up when they’re faced with anything bigger than a street thug.”

Peter wonders, briefly, if the decision of alien lifeforms to consistently invade New York City is down to pure chance, or as a challenge to the Avengers in the general vicinity. If the latter is the case, Peter does have to wonder why these things chose to invade New York over somewhere like Russia, or even Ohio, considering how completely overpowered the Avengers seem against them.

“Is this even a fair fight?” Peter questions. “I get the whole _aliens invading our planet are bad_ argument, but they’re so helpless that I feel bad hurting them.”

“Okay, Mr Moral Compass,” Sam teases, “you wanna sit ‘em down and just ask them to leave real nicely?”

“I’m just _saying_ ,” Peter defends, reaching down to scoop one of the aliens running around at his feet up into his arms, “would it be so bad to take a couple of them with us?”

“May would not approve,” Tony chimes in, his first words over the comms since they’d landed.

“I’d keep it at the Compound,” Peter says, playfully rolling his eyes under his mask like anyone other than him will be able to see him do so, “obviously.”

There’s a slight pause before Tony, again, “Pepper would not approve.”

“Sucks,” Peter sighs, “I feel like this really could have been the start of a beautiful friendship between me and Padmé Jr.”

“You remember these things are incredibly dangerous, right Queens?” Steve asks, trying to ruin Peter’s fun. He sounds slightly out of breath, and maybe Peter should help out a bit more. But, he knows this is something they can deal with in a few minutes, so he doesn’t feel any particular sense of urgency. He can waste a couple of seconds cooing over how cute these things are, even if they are _apparently_ dangerous. Which, come on. They can't be _that_ dangerous.

“Yup,” Peter says, “just choosing to ignore it.”

And it’s all fun and games, really— these things aren’t a _threat_ at all. They’re just… cute little aliens, who are way out of their depth. No shame in that.

It’s all fun and games, at least, until Padmé Jr unfurls a tentacle and digs it deep into Peter’s arm.

It breaks through the suit, and Peter has to bite back a yell as white hot pain courses through his body, barely stopping himself from collapsing on the ground with it. He drops Padmé Jr, who simply scampers off without a care as Peter’s head starts spinning.

“Spider-Man?” Natasha’s voice is garbled. Or is it—? That might just be in Peter’s head, because she sounded fine a few minutes ago. Oh. This isn’t good. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Peter lies, “all good. Just, uh— got surprised.”

It hurts. It really, really hurts. Peter feels like every vein in his body is filled with magma, burning hot as he tries desperately to _focus_.

“Let’s get this wrapped up,” Steve says, voice the épitomé of strong leadership, “Sam and Rhodey: take out the ones that aren’t on the ground. Tony and Peter: cover everything to our left. Nat and I will cover the right.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Tony says, “c’mon kid, with me.”

“On it,” Peter replies, and he sees double for just a second before everything snaps back into place. This is really— he should tell Tony. But they’re almost done here, so maybe it would be best to not worry everyone while they’re finishing this up, right? Yeah.

And Peter’s right. At least, he’s right about them being almost done. It takes maybe ten minutes max for them to have everything wrapped up nicely for Damage Control to take over whenever they arrive. The six of them collapse onto the quinjet in quiet victory as they begin the relatively short flight upstate.

“What’s that?” Natasha questions less than a minute after they board, shooting a pointed look in Peter’s direction as he takes his mask off.

“What’s what?” Peter replies, his vision half-swimming as he tries to focus in on her or what she’s looking at.

“Your suit,” she says simply, “the arm is ripped up. You’re bleeding.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Peter exclaims, as if he’d just been reminded of his injury. He was hoping to avoid bringing it up. He hadn’t realised it was so obvious. Well, while he _was_ trying to hide it, there’s no way he’s going to lie to the _Black Widow’s_ face, “uh— Padmé Jr may have kinda sorta betrayed me.”

Peter catches the way in which Tony closes his eyes and lays his head back against his seat, letting out a long-suffering sigh, “one of those aliens did that to you?”

“...Yes?” Peter confirms tentatively.

“And you didn’t think to tell us?”

“I thought of it,” Peter defends, holding his arm up to show the group, as if to somehow prove he's completely fine. The inverse is the case. He sees Tony cringe slightly as he stares at Peter’s arm, “but I’ve been bitten by a radioactive spider before, so I think I can handle a little sting from a plant gremlin.”

It’s as if the universe never wants to see him succeed, because as soon as Peter finishes speaking he’s overcome by an intense wave of nausea. He feels a throbbing pain begin behind his eyes as his vision worsens still. On instinct, Peter’s fingers fly to his temples, moving to cradle his head in his hands quickly after that. He peaks through his fingers down at the floor of the quinjet, the carpet swirling beneath his feet.

Something is really, definitely wrong, and Peter should stop playing it off like it’s nothing.

“It’s nothing,” Peter says with his heads still in his hands, because he’s stubborn and he’s still deciding if he’d rather admit that he was wrong in front of Tony and the _Avengers_ , or die. It’s a tough call.

“Sure seems like something. Lie down,” Sam instructs, easily seeing right through him, “someone get him some water, and a bucket or something.”

“M’not a baby,” Peter protests, voice noticeably weaker than it was just a few seconds ago. Tony moves across the room to push on his shoulder to lay Peter down on the chair as Steve, Rhodey and Natasha all dispel at Sam’s command. Peter doesn’t think it’s a task that needs all three of them. Or is it?

It sounds almost like the start of a joke. Hey, how many Avengers does it take to fill a glass of water—?

“Mm, you just like running headfirst into danger and then not telling anyone when you get hurt,” Tony fires back, “very adult and responsible, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Peter whispers.

“Sure, kiddo,” Tony smiles softly, resting a hand against Peter’s forehead to check his temperature, “are you gonna be sick?”

“No,” Peter replies. Even he doesn’t know if he’s telling the truth. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears.

“Are you sure?” Tony presses. “If you vom on the carpet in here you’ll have to send a personal fruit basket to the cleaners.”

Peter groans out something intelligible, lightly swiping at Tony’s hand in an effort to move Tony’s hand from his forehead.

Tony seems to get the memo and moves his hand himself. Peter feels so uncoordinated he’s not even sure if he _touched_ Tony’s hand in his attempt to move it.

“Do we know if they were poisonous?” Peter vaguely hears Natasha ask. “About _any_ sort of symptoms so we know what we’re dealing with?”

“We don’t know,” Steve responds, “this was humanity’s first encounter with these lifeforms.”

“It’s so obvious,” Peter gasps, throwing an arm over his face to block out the bright lights of the quinjet, “Bellsprouts are a secondary poison type.”

“And now he’s delirious,” Tony says, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“We didn’t actually fight an army of Pokémon,” Sam comments, “you know that, right?”

“ _Duh_ ,” Peter pouts, squeezing his eyes shut from under his arm, “if we saw Pokémon I would now have a pet one. Or six, so I could have a full team. Although, I’d probably be at a disadvantage if I just had one Pokémon, but six times.”

“Please talk about something that I know,” Tony sighs, trying to keep his voice neutral but Peter can hear that little twinge of panic, “so I know you’re not hallucinating or insane.”

“I’m—” Peter begins, cutting himself off with a startled gasp as he lifts his arm and sees nothing but a red _blob_ in its place. Is he going blind? Is this the end? Man, this sucks.

“What?” Tony says, previous panicked twinge now sharp in his voice. Peter can’t see his expression — only a tan sort of circle where his head should be — but he can imagine the way in which Tony probably has his eyebrows pulled together, lips pressed in a thin line.

“I’m like— no glasses,” Peter says eloquently, “but extreme.”

It really is the best description of what he’s seeing now. Everything is blurry around the edges. It reminds him of before the spider bite, when his glasses prescription was -7 in both eyes. But now, it’s worse than that. Blurrier— moving around more. He hasn’t had to wear his glasses in a while, but he’s pretty sure things that _definitely_ weren’t moving would not move around like they are now.

“I contacted Helen,” Peter hears Rhodey say, but he sounds so far away, and Peter doesn’t really want to move his head right now to look at him, “she’ll be ready on the ground when we get back. Six minutes out.”

Tony nods and Peter squeezes his eyes shut, the lights of the quinjet only exacerbating his headache. He almost thinks _how could this get any worse_ , but he ultimately decides against tempting fate. It could almost be considered peaceful for a second, before—

“Oh god,” Peter gasps, eyes flying open as he sits up roughly, “gonna—”

Tony shoves the bucket under Peter’s chin with a second to spare.

“Oh, Pete,” he says sympathetically, rubbing a comforting hand on his back as he throws up, “you’re alright, you’re okay.”

Peter is decidedly _not_ okay. He’s dizzy and confused and in pain and he’s not on the precipice of throwing up anymore but the nausea still lingers.

Peter flops back down on the chair as he hears someone ask, “is there blood?”

He can’t really identify the voice. It sounds distorted in Peter’s ringing ears as he squints at his own bloody arm and whispers, “blood.”

Everyone ignores him, however, and Peter watches as Tony peaks into the bucket that Peter hurled into probably somewhere between fifteen seconds and fifteen million hours ago which— _ew, gross_ , and says, “no blood.”

“Good sign,” says the mysterious voice again, “he’ll make it, Tony.”

 _Make it?_ Make it where? Or, like… _live?_ Peter’s just chilling. Lying down. Watching as shapes twist and spiral around him. Of course he’ll make it.

“I think you’re being very dramatic,” Peter mumbles in order to voice this train of thought. He slowly blinks Tony back into focus, who’s levelling him with a concerned frown like he doesn’t exactly believe Peter, “see? Watch this.”

Before anyone can get a word in, Peter launches himself up off the chair, taking a few sure steps around as if to say, _I’m walking! Come on, I’m fine._ Surely, they’ll believe him now. He’s completely, truly, absolutely—

_Falling._

***

Peter wakes up in a hospital bed. He immediately recognises the Medbay at the Compound, having spent much more time here than probably any Avenger.

The bright side is that he doesn’t really feel dizzy anymore. The world is stationary once again, sharp and in focus like he’s grown accustomed to. It’s almost comforting as he takes in his surroundings, his eyes coming to land on—

“Oh, hey, Mr Stark,” Peter greets casually. The man is sat next to Peter’s bed, looking at Peter with badly concealed worry.

“Don’t _oh, hey, Mr Stark_ me,” Tony says, “everyone’s asking about you, by the way. We thought you were a goner for a solid ten seconds there.”

Peter remembers feeling dizzy, but that’s about it. He asks, “what happened?”

“You tried to stand up and ended up passing out in my arms,” Tony clarifies, “it was very Victorian lady who just saw an ankle.”

If Tony was in reach, Peter would hit his arm for that. As it stands, though, the teenager simply scoffs lightly and sits up, crossing his arms over his chest. Tony doesn’t object to him sitting up, so Peter can’t have been hurt that badly.

Dr Helen Cho takes this moment to walk into the room and start checking some screens that Peter definitely doesn’t understand.

“You need to sleep more,” is the first thing that Dr Cho says to him, “we thought you’d be awake hours ago, but it looks like your body just needed to rest.”

“Sorry, Dr Cho,” Peter replies, sounding almost apologetic, “am I all good, though?”

“Miraculously,” Dr Cho says, “in layman’s terms, you were poisoned by one of the aliens you encountered. Luckily, your metabolism helped you to combat it relatively quickly, and you’re still alive. Iit shouldn’t do any real damage, now.”

“Awesome,” Peter grins sleepily, “see, Mr Stark, I _told_ you I was fine—”

“—with the proviso that you lay up in bed for a little bit,” Helen continues as Peter’s smile drops, “that means no Spider-Man until you’re completely healed. Five days.”

“No, that’s totally unfair,” Peter whines, “I feel _fine_ , c’mon Dr Cho, that’s so unnecessary.”

“Five days,” Helen repeats, leaving no room for argument as she gives Tony a curt nod and walks out.

“You know I’m fine,” Peter tries the second the door closes, “I don’t have to wait five days.”

“You absolutely do have to wait five days,” Tony says, “you’re lucky you’re even _here_ , Peter. Listen—”

“Are you seriously about to lecture me right now?” Peter asks, slightly incredulous. He’s laid up in a hospital bed and he’s about to get a _lecture_.

“Dr Cho said that poison would have killed anyone else,” Tony says, and Peter goes quiet, biting the inside of his cheek, “you could’ve died.”

Just from that little sting? It hadn’t really felt like it. Sure, his senses were going a bit weird and his concept of time was thrown completely out the window, but... _dying?_ That seems extreme. It obviously isn’t, Dr Cho is the best at what she does so there’s no way she’s wrong, but— it just _seems_ wrong. The news leaves an uncomfortable feeling in Peter’s stomach.

“But I didn’t,” Peter says, voice deliberately on the side of placating rather than petulant, “I’m here, I’m okay. And… I’ll wait five days,” he concedes, rolling his eyes dramatically, “if you really think it’s necessary.”

Peter thinks five days without Spider-Man is ridiculous. He feels completely fine now, and Dr Cho said it herself that the poison is past the stage of it being able to do any real damage. It’s dumb, but if it will put a clearly frazzled Tony’s mind at rest, Peter’s sure he can survive five days.

“Good, because it wasn’t an option,” Tony snarks, although Peter can tell that he’s grateful, “the five days. Or the dying. Not an option.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Peter nods, “do you want to tell Rhino, or should I? I think you should, because the news that he’s not allowed to kill me would probably make him so mad he’d kill me then and there.”

Tony laughs at that, and even though they’ve known each other for years now, Peter’s chest still swells with pride at the fact that he can make _Iron Man_ laugh. Even _talking_ to Tony Stark seemed like such an impossibility for him until it actually happened; until Tony showed up at his apartment asking all sorts of questions about Spider-Man.

“We need to figure out a way to get that guy off your back and onto the Raft,” Tony murmurs, voice much more serious than it was when he last spoke. Peter can already see him thinking, mind working as he stares off at the wall just past Peter.

“Well,” Peter shrugs, “we’ve got five days.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kaplanverse) if you're into that


End file.
